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Woman shocked to find her own home advertised on agent’s website
A woman who was looking on an agent’s website told of her shock to find her own home featured on it.
Laura Blundell told yesterday’s You and Yours programme on BBC radio that she recognised it immediately and that the soft furnishings were hers.
She said her home was neither for sale nor for let.
She told the programme that it had previously been up for sale, but that the buyer had pulled out.
She said that on finding her home advertised “I visited the letting agent and asked if the flat was still available”.
She said she was told it had gone, but that there was another she might like.
Ms Blundell said she then told the agents, Harrison Property Partners in Canary Wharf, London, that the property was her own home.
She told the programme she had never provided the agent with photographs and said that the firm had trawled the internet.
Harrison Property Partners told You and Yours that a mistake had been made for which they had apologised and offered compensation. Ms Blundell said she had not been offered compensation.
She said that Trading Standards had been notified, and been told that they would be monitoring the agents.
Mark Hayward, managing director of the NAEA, told the programme: “It is a pity to hear that Trading Standards are not enforcing it as they should be.”
He said that an agent acting without instructions and listing a property that was not available was committing an offence under Consumer Protection laws.
He said that there was a shortage of properties for sale and rent, and that agents had gone back over property portals to find something to list – either to give them a better presence locally or to tempt people so that they could be told about other properties.
Told of another case, in Sheffield, where a For Sale board had gone up outside a tenant’s home which was not on the market, Hayward said that “flyboarding” also acted as an enticement for people to contact agents.
He said: “There is a dire shortage of property. There is a ten-year low in properties available, and a 13-year high in people looking.”
http://www.propertyindustryeye.com/woman-shocked-to-find-her-own-home-advertised-on-agents-website/
